PAIN IS A POWERFUL WORD that triggers strong feelings—fear, anger, helplessness, panic, and even grief. If you’re one of the millions of people struggling with pain as you read this sentence, you are most certainly not alone. What mystifies patients, loved ones, and treating professionals alike is why pain persists long after an injury has healed, lingering for no apparent reason. Like many others, you may have shuttled from doctor to doctor, diagnosis to diagnosis, and pain treatment to pain treatment. As your situation has become increasingly complex, you may have given up hope that your pain can shift and improve, and that you can become an authority over your pain, rather than your pain continuing to dominate you. About two-thirds of the people in pain today have been living with significant pain for more than five years. In fact, the highest percentage of all medical visits is made to seek relief from pain. Yet this relief is often not easily found. People with persistent and chronic pain struggle to find doctors who can effectively treat them. Untreated or undertreated pain is an ongoing epidemic. One recent study found that one out of four pain patients had changed doctors at least three times, citing the primary reason for change as that they still experienced significant pain. Other reasons given were that their pain was not taken seriously, that doctors were unwilling to treat their pain aggressively, and that doctors were without adequate knowledge to treat their pain effectively. A 2011 report issued by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) calls pain a “public health crisis,” emphasizing that more people are suffering from chronic pain than from diabetes, cancer, and heart disease combined. The IOM study calls for better training in pain treatment at medical schools (since only five out of 133 medical schools surveyed currently require courses in pain management) and advocates continuing education training that helps keep professional knowledge current A survey by the American Pain Society in 1999 indicated that more than 40 percent of the general population who suffered moderate to severe pain were unable to find adequate pain relief.